#465 Oracle buys StackEngine

From their website -

StackEngine helps enterprises on their Virtualization to Containerization (V-to-C) journey by bringing modern, enterprise-grade management to container-centric architectures. We build software to manage and automate Docker applications, giving organizations the power to simply and securely compose, deploy, and automate resilient container-native applications. StackEngine deeply believes that Docker and the containerization ecosystem will change the way enterprises build applications and consume infrastructure.

#464 ICS 15.4.5 --> New Features

ICS 15.4.5 was released recently.

The new features are documented here

I will be covering many of these features in future posts - but first, it's time for a rest -
Christmas!

#463 SOA CS --> API Manager Flavour

This is essentially a revamp of a previous post on API Manager,
albeit for the SOA CS environment.

You can read the original post here

I created an API Manager instance on SOA CS -

Here are the menu options -

Let's look at the Fusion Middleware Control -
Here we can create API Manager users.
I have covered this is a previous API Manager post, but to save you time,
here are the screenshots -

I create 2 users, curator, consumer -

Set the roles -

Above, the 2 api manager roles.
I assign my users to these.

I can now login to the API Manager Portal -

Url format: https://yourAPIManagerHost:7002/apimanager

The catalog is empty -

I create a simple credit card validation service and deploy it to a war file.

I then go to the weblogic console of API Manager and deploy the war.

Check out the WSDL

-

Now I go to the service bus console on API Manager -

Here I create a simple Service Bus process to call the web service and
validate a credit card.

I test the Proxy Service -

Next step is to publish the proxy, so that it will appear in the catalog -

Now I go back to the API Manager Portal -

Managed / Unmanaged

From the docs:

A managed API is an access-controlled API. Per-user metrics are also available for
managed APIs. In order to successfully invoke a managed API, a user will first need to
create an application and subscribe to a given managed API. The client must then invoke
the API providing the API Key for the call to be successful.

Unmanaged APis can be invoked without subscription and without passing an
entitlement key at runtime.

Here are the details from the console -

So how do I make this managed?
Simply go back to the SB console and set it.

The API Manager console is updated accordingly -

Now how does a consumer use this API?

Login to the portal as the consumer user -

Subscription is done via applications -

Now I just need to click on the icon on the right, to add the ValCC API.

Note the API Key: c77ab0d8-abc7-4d95-96fa-22fbba99077a

Embed this entitlement key as a http user header - X-API-KEY when invoking the API

X-API-KEY: c77ab0d8-abc7-4d95-96fa-22fbba99077a

The following test from SOAP-UI was done on another cloud instance, hence the different X-API-KEY value -

I get the following response, if I delete the header from the request -

#462 BPM 12.2.1 on OTN --> new features

Software is downloadable from here

New features

1. ALTA look and Feel

Here is the em UI -

Here is the BPM Workspace UI -

2. REST API

Now I will approve the above task via the REST API -

I can validate this in workspace -

REST API Docs here

3. Reusable Interface Components

To quote the new features doc -

BPM Suite 12.2.1 includes user interface (UI) components that can be embedded in WebCenter Portal. These include Task List, where Portal users can access tasks assigned to them by BPM, and Application List, where Portal users can launch BPM applications for which they have been enabled. These BPM UIs can be imported as a Portal Resource Catalog, then embedded into any Portal page, and easily configured based on a set of most common parameters. 

You can find the new features overview here

Also please note -
You may need to set the following to get your ADF task forms to render in workspace.

Set the Host Name for your Human Workflow Components to localhost

#461 SOA CS vs SOA Suite on-Prem

Here are some of the essential differences -

1. Currently no shared storage with SOA CS
ergo. log files local to each vm.

This may also impinge on use of the file adapter in a clustered scenario.

2. Load balancing provided by Oracle Traffic Director.

Here you can configure external network access.


3. You cannot deploy directly from JDeveloper to SOA CS.
See my previous blog post for an example of deployment.
Essentially, a non-issue - but good to know!

4. With SOA CS, backups are done automatically for you.

5. With SOA CS, you can login to the SOA VM via ssh, my
previous post described how to do this.

6. The following SaaS cloud adapters are supported by SOA CS -

Oracle Eloqua Cloud adapter,
Oracle Sales Cloud adapter,
Oracle RightNow Cloud adapter,
Oracle HCM Cloud adapter,
Salesforce Cloud adapter.

#460 SOA CS - Composite Deployment and ssh access

I have installed SOA 12c Quickstart on my laptop.

I create a simple BPEL process -

I then simply deploy this via my SOA CS enterprise manager.

I can then test via em -

Yes, exactly the same as on-premise.

ssh Access

 login as opc

for root, enter -
sudo su - 

for oracle, enter -

Navigate about -

Navigate to the SOA domain home -

Here are the log files -